
Saint Margaret’s
Anglican Church
Budapest, Hungary
Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36:5-10;
1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John
2:1-11
“Jesus did this, the first of his
signs, in Cana of Galilee, and
revealed his glory; and his
disciples believed in him.”
As improbable as it may seem, one of the most popular images depicted in the
great artistic period of the Renaissance in Europe, a time roughly from the 1400s to
the 1600s, was the story or scene given to us this morning in our account from the
second chapter of the Gospel of John, the Wedding Feast at Cana. Why this story,
of all the stories of the Scriptures, so caught the imagination of the artists of the
time, great and not-so-great, remains a matter of conjecture to this day among art
historians and museum curators.
Was it the inherent drama of our Lord’s first reported miracle, changing water to
wine…? Was it the human-interest element inevitable in the tale of a wedding
festival very nearly gone wrong…? Every bride’s and every bridegroom’s worst
nightmare. Was it the characterisation and biblical typology of the subject
matter…? Or was it simply the opportunity in the Renaissance to at last depict
essentially a purely secular occasion familiar to everyone, a wedding dinner, but an
occasion nevertheless still cloaked in religious terms…? It could of course be all of
this and more.
We have an early example of the genre before us this morning, the Wedding Feast
at Cana, as depicted by little-known German printmaker, Sebald Beham, probably
from the early 1530s. It is a modest affair, to be sure, the original being only some
twelve inches long by eight inches high. By my count, there are only nine figures in
the print, not much of a wedding party, then or now, if you ask me, and, O yes, one
parrot, a common artistic emblem or devise at the time denoting the presence of
the Mother of Jesus; a talking bird apparently being thought as improbable as a
virgin birth. The figure of Jesus is easy to pick out. Interestingly, no one is smiling in
the image, much less talking, which may be a reflection of the dearth of wine or
maybe of the sober German printmaker’s disposition, or preference for beer. Hard
to say.
Now, a mere thirty years later, in the early 1560s, the great Italian master, Paolo
Veronese, was, curiously I think, commissioned by the celibate Benedictine monks
of Venice to paint the same subject-matter, the Wedding Feast at Cana, for their
monastery dining room, or refectory, as it was called. And it is a masterpiece,
arguably one of the most dazzling paintings of the entire era. It puts Disney to
shame. It is huge and extravagant, like nothing ever before. Today, it is still the
largest painting in all the collections of the Louvre in Paris. There are well over one-
hundred and thirty figures on the canvas, one more sumptuously and elegantlyattired than the other. Jesus is in there somewhere, if you look close. I have not
spotted a parrot. Everyone is genuinely having a good time. It is a wedding festival
that would make proud even today’s oligarchs and hi-tech billionaires.
Now, your Sunday school homework, by the way, is to look up Paolo Veronese’s
painting and see for yourself.
The dramatic shift in the depiction of this simple Gospel narrative from Beham to
Veronese may in itself be a key to the narrative’s understanding. Jesus and his
disciples, and mother, attend a wedding festival in a Galilean village so small and
obscure that today no one knows for sure where it is or was. The happy couple
cannot have been rich and quickly become the unhappy couple as their
presumably modest wine supply runs dry, and the closest Bortarsaság outlet is
miles away. Prompted by his mother, our Lord changes the water meant for
washing, or purification, into wine and thus saves the day. A scene so homely and
ordinary that our friend Sebald Beham, the German printmaker, would have fit right
in.
Yet, it is in the midst of this, the ordinary and prosaic, that the disciples for the first
time, as the Evangelist John tells us, recognise the glory of our Lord and come to
believe in him. This arguably simple countryside wedding becomes the type or
typology of the heavenly banquet to come, as Christ and his Church are brought
together, bridegroom and bride, and we too today are united with Christ. Something
indeed to celebrate, something worth a heavenly wedding banquet. The
sumptuousness of Veronese’s wedding scene has nothing on the glory of this
heavenly banquet to come. And if Jesus’ hour has not yet come, as he cryptically
explains to his Mother, it is at least announced and foretold.
Water meant for purification becomes, as the steward proclaims, the best wine
saved for last. And it is the wine of our Eucharistic feast this morning, itself a
foretaste of the heavenly banquet, which becomes the blood of our Lord spent at
Calvary for our purification, for our redemption. The miracle of Cana is the miracle
of the abundance of God’s love and mercy toward his people. Towards us. Put
another way, in spite of or even because of the very ordinariness of our everyday
existence, great things can and do come from the abundant generosity of a loving
God. That is the glory of the Christ which the disciples discern.
Hungarian folk wisdom suggests that too many preachers like me too often preach
water but end up themselves drinking wine. Vízet prédikal és bort iszik. This
morning, my friends, I am emphatically preaching wine. I preach the wine of Cana;
I preach the abundant love of God; of God’s involvement in the very humdrum and
everyday of our existence; of God’s love which in turn makes our love for one
another real; which makes miracles and signs not only possible but inevitable. This
is after all what our Lord came to show us by his signs. This is what we see in
Boham’s modest woodcut and in Veronese’s majestic canvas.
“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and
his disciples believed in him.” In return, I reckon we could do worse than to
ourselves take the advice of Jesus’ mother and, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Amen.The Rev. Dr. Frank Hegedűs
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